George Green
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| George Green | |
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| Born | July 14, 1793 Sneinton, Nottinghamshire, England |
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| Died | May 31, 1841 (aged 47) Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
George Green (14 July 1793–31 May 1841) was a British mathematician and physicist, who wrote An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism (Green, 1828). (Note: This 1828 essay can be found in "Mathematical papers of the late George Green", edited by N. M. Ferrers. The website for this is given below.) The essay introduced several important concepts, among them a theorem similar to modern Green's theorem, the idea of potential functions as currently used in physics, and the concept of what are now called Green's functions. George Green was the first person to try and explain a mathematical theory of the theories of electricity and magnetism which formed the basis for other scientists such as James Clerk Maxwell, William Thomson, and others. His work ran parallel to that of the great mathematician Gauss (potential theory).
Green's life story is remarkable in that he was almost entirely self-taught. He was born and lived for most of his life in the English town of Sneinton, Nottinghamshire, nowadays part of the city of Nottingham. His father (also named George) was a baker who had built and owned a brick windmill used to grind grain. The younger Green only had about one year of formal schooling as a child, between the ages of 8 and 9.
In his adult life, Green worked in his father's mill, taking ownership upon his father's death in 1829. At some point, he began to study mathematics. As Nottingham had little in the way of intellectual resources, it is unclear to historians exactly where Green obtained information on current developments in mathematics. Only one person educated in mathematics, John Toplis, headmaster of Nottingham High School 1806–1819, is known to have lived in Nottingham at the time. When Green published his Essay in 1828, it was sold on a subscription basis to 51 people, most of whom were friends and probably could not understand it. The wealthy landowner and mathematician Edward Bromhead bought a copy and encouraged Green to do further work in mathematics. Not believing the offer was sincere, Green did not contact Bromhead for two years.
Finally, Green contacted Bromhead, who enabled Green to enter Cambridge University. Green entered as an undergraduate in 1833 at age 40. His academic career was excellent, and after his graduation in 1837 he stayed on the faculty at Gonville and Caius College. He wrote on optics, acoustics, and hydrodynamics, and while his later works have not had the same impact as his Essay, they contain some substantial results. Green's work on the motion of waves in a canal anticipates the WKB approximation of quantum mechanics, while his research on light waves and the properties of the ether produced what is now known as the Cauchy-Green tensor. In 1839, he was elected a Fellow of the college; however, he was only able to enjoy the privileges of that position for a short time: In 1840 he became ill and returned to Nottingham, where he died the next year.
Green's work was not well-known in the mathematical community during his lifetime. Besides Green himself, the first mathematician to quote his 1828 work was the British mathematician Robert Murphy (1806-1843) in his 1833 work. In 1845 (four years after Green's death), Green's work was rediscovered by the young William Thomson (age 21 in 1845), later known as Lord Kelvin, who popularised it for future mathematicians. According to the book "George Green" by D.M. Cannell, William Thomson noticed Murphy's citation of Green's 1828 essay but found it difficult to locate Green's 1828 work; he finally got some copies of Green's 1828 work from William Hopkins in 1845. Green's theorem and functions were important tools in classical mechanics, and were revised by Schwinger's 1948 work on electrodynamics that led to his 1965 Nobel prize (shared with Feynman and Tomonaga). Green's functions later also proved useful in analyzing superconductivity.
The George Green Library at the University of Nottingham is named after him, and houses the majority of the University's Science and Engineering Collection. In 1986, Green's Windmill was restored to working order. It now serves both as a working example of a 19th century windmill and as a museum and science centre dedicated to George Green.
On a visit to Nottingham in 1930, Albert Einstein commented that Green had been twenty years ahead of his time. The theoretical physicist, Julian Schwinger, who used Green's functions in his ground-breaking works, published a tribute, entitled "The Greening of Quantum Field Theory: George and I," in 1993.
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[edit] References
- D.M. Cannell, "George Green mathematician and physicist 1793-1841", The Athlone Press, London, 1993.
- Robert Murphy, "On the inverse method of definite integrals", Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. 4 (1833), pp. 353-408. (Note: This was the first quotation of Green's 1828 work by somebody other than Green himself.)
- O'Connor, John J. & Robertson, Edmund F., “George Green”, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
- George Green. - An excellent on-line source of George Green information
- Green, George (1828). "An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism". Archived 2004-07-24, archive link not functioning as of 2006-09-12.
- Cannel, D. M. and Lord, N. J. (March 1993). "George Green, mathematician and physicist 1793-1841". The Mathematical Gazette 77: 26-51.
- Challis, L. and Sheard, F. (December 2003). "The Green of Green Functions". Physics Today 56 (12): 41-46.
- Green's Mill and Science Centre (Web page). Retrieved on November 22, 2005.
